Headline, August05, 2013

'''CASEY AFFLECK : 

THE -OTHER- AFFLECK'''​'

Two brothers came to Hollywood several years ago. The older one looked like an actor. The younger one could act. Any fool with a studio could see what to do with them. Before long, the older brother, with his square jaw and strapping physique, has been fashioned into a cardboard action hero. Meanwhile, the soft-spoken, wispy looking younger brother could also be found at the local multiplex, buried about ten actors deep in the Ocean's Eleven series.

With starring roles in two major dramas   -as Dennis Lehane's beloved private dick Patrick Kenzie in Gone Baby Gone and as the lesser known title character in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford  -Casey Affleck  finally started getting his due. But over a dozen and a half years is an awfully long time for us to have been watching the wrong Affleck.

Biology may well be destiny here, because what Ben lacks onscreen is precisely what the runtier Casey has in spades; a sense of his own fallibility. With the exception of Chasing Amy  -as much a startling anomaly in Kevin Smith's career as in Ben's -Affleck the elder has never shown a hint of internal contradiction. He has exactly two modes: glad-handing narcissism and self-mocking awareness of his glad-handing narcissism. Sure, the later can be amusing in small doses-

See his egomaniacal master thespian in Shakespeare in Love or the cozy way inhabits George Reeves's pathetic ambition in Hollywoodland. But even those performances take place within smirking quotation marks. Rarely do you feel any connection with a recognizable flawed human being. This isn't a problem with Casey, who is pretty much all abject all the time. For an undiluted dose, check out the underrated Lonesome Jim, directed by fellow endearing loser Steve Buscemi, in which C.Affleck plays a failed writer who returns to his jerkwater hometown.

There are aspects of wish fulfillment here, to be sure  -Casey somehow manages to nail Liv Taylor  -but his passive aggressive performance acknowledges the self-loathing that's prevented Jim from accomplishing much of anything. You know the actor has chops when the character retains empathy even after he's goaded his (ahem) older brother into suicide attempt.

Until now, Lonesome Jim was Casey's only true starring role. But I suppose one could also count Gus Van Sant's awesomely alienating Gerry, in which Affleck spends the entire movie trudging across the desert with Matt Damon. Director Andrew Dominik, however, had the inspired notion to cast him opposite Brad Pitt in the story of Jesse James's final days, adapted from Ron Hansen's novel. James was the rock star of the old west, a genuine living legend; Robert Ford, his killer, was essentially a groupie who ass-kicked his way into the gang and......

Shot the unarmed James from behind. You can see how the actors' relative statuses  -icon versus relative unknown-  do much of the heavy lifting, but Affleck also makes an unforgettably craven villain  -or perhaps anti hero, shading his performance with so many layers of envy, admiration, and deceit  that you are not sure even Bob Ford knows exactly why he pulled the trigger.

Directed and cowritten by Ben  -his first script since winning an Oscar for Good Will Hunting-  Gone Baby Gone finds detective Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro investigating the kidnapping of a little girl in their Boston neighborhood, at odds with both the victim's family and the cops.

On the one hand, it's hard to buy Casey, who, as usual, look's as if he'd blow away in light breeze, taking out burly biker dudes and staring down gun barrel without flinching. Only your brother could miscast you this horribly, one thinks. But the movie, like Lehane's novel, is darker and thornier than it initially appears, and Patrick Kenzie, our ostensible hero, wraps up the case with the most questionable instance of doing the right thing.

We have Patrick surveying the emotional wreckage with an uncertain mixture of pride and regret   -a quintessential Casey Affleck moment. At last, both brothers are where they belong.

Both Masters of the Performing Art!

With respectful dedication to all the Students, Professors and Teacher of Australia  See ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless : ''In Step With The Times.''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless